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1 |
ID:
178184
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Summary/Abstract |
In the early 1980s, the East German Ministry for State Security systematically recruited Arab students as covert informers. Analysis of this historical case contributes to discussions about surveillance as a social practice and to an emerging critical literature about intelligence agencies as knowledge producers and agents of governance. Proceeding from a close reading of archives documenting the recruitment process, I argue that it produced, first, classic modern bureaucratic security mechanisms designed to govern populations and, second, highly specific sovereign interventions into the lives of single individuals. By focusing primarily on the agents of surveillance, rather than its objects, the article addresses an important gap in the surveillance literature.
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2 |
ID:
152404
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Summary/Abstract |
Azraq, a new camp for Syrian refugees in the Jordanian desert, presents an unprecedented integration of humanitarian service delivery and harsh security measures. I argue that Azraq’s ‘innovative’ order can only be explained in reference to three security claims that international refugee aid answers to: the claim to secure Syrian refugees, the claim to secure the Jordanian state and the claim to secure aid workers. Implementing these claims entails contradictory practices, which should create dilemmas for humanitarian aid, yet in Azraq these practices merge with each other. This merging (or integration) is aided by the humanitarian sector’s eager embrace of hi-tech solutions, especially digital data management. The article contributes to the growing debate about how security is articulated in the humanitarian arena by placing this debate’s key findings into conversation within a richly researched study of Azraq’s ‘material assemblage’ (Hilhorst and Jansen, 2010; Meiches, 2015). Further, the article emphasizes the importance of the under-researched area of aid organizations’ own security management.
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3 |
ID:
145064
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Summary/Abstract |
During the Iraqi refugee crisis of 2007–10, international humanitarian organizations appeared for the first time in the Syrian domestic arena. These aid providers interpreted the position of Iraqi refugees in Syria according to a liberal conception of state–citizen relations that did not accord with the Syrian government's actual approach to Iraqis. Guided by this liberal frame, humanitarian organizations introduced biopolitical programs into the Syrian domestic context. Through new forms of population management, they solicited forms of behavior from Iraqis that were different from those required by Syrian state authorities. Drawing on the concept of biopower and using ethnographic material drawn from long-term research in Damascus in 2009–10, this article sheds light on an important political development in Syria shortly before the outbreak of social unrest and on the social changes that international humanitarian aid may transport.
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